Rūmī on worship, divine generosity, and the heart that receives
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
Bismi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm. In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful.
A command usually draws our attention to what is required of us. We ask what we must do, what time it will take, and whether we have done enough. In this couplet, Rūmī invites us to consider the generosity of the One who commands. The worship we are asked to offer becomes a place where we receive what our own souls need.
من نکردم امر تا سودی کنم بلک تا بر بندگان جودی کنم
Man nakardam amr tā sūdī kunam; Balke tā bar bandagān jūdī kunam.
I did not ordain worship for any gain of My own; but it is a manifestation of generosity towards My servants.
The couplet belongs to Rūmī’s Masnavī, Book II, verse 1756. God is speaking within the poet’s story of Moses and the shepherd. These are Rūmī’s words in a spiritual narrative, rather than a quotation from the Qur’an.[1]
Amr means command or ordinance; worship is understood from the surrounding passage. Sūd is gain, profit, or benefit. Jūd is generosity or bounty. The rhyme brings gain and giving close together in sound, while the two lines change the direction in which the benefit flows. God’s command arises from generosity towards His servants.
In Rūmī’s story, a shepherd speaks to God through the language of everyday care. He longs to mend His shoes, comb His hair, and bring Him milk. Moses hears the words and rebukes him for speaking as though God had bodily needs. The shepherd is overcome with grief and goes away.[2]
The narrative then turns towards the effect of that correction. Moses is asked whether he has come to bring people into union or to separate them. Within this address comes the couplet about divine generosity. Soon afterwards, Rūmī explains that praise does not make God pure; the worshippers themselves become pure and, in his image, scatter pearls.[1]
The story makes me consider the responsibility that accompanies religious knowledge. A person’s understanding may need patient teaching. Their longing for God also needs care. Guidance has a deeper purpose when it helps understanding grow while sustaining the willingness to turn towards Him.
A close Qur’anic companion appears in Sūrat Ṭā Hā. It calls on the Prophet to enjoin prayer upon his family and persevere in it. The verse then says:
لَا نَسْأَلُكَ رِزْقًا نَحْنُ نَرْزُقُكَ
Lā nasʾaluka rizqan; naḥnu narzuquka.
We ask you for no provision; We provide for you. — Qur’an 20:132[3]
The command to pray stands beside a reminder of divine giving. The One who calls us to worship is already sustaining us. Even the breath with which we recite belongs to a life we have received.
Qur’an 29:6 makes the direction of benefit explicit: the person who strives does so for their own good, while God has no need of creation.[4] I read these verses alongside Rūmī’s couplet as a way of understanding its central movement. Our effort matters deeply within a relationship whose generosity begins with God.
This couplet is useful when reflecting on the spirit in which we guide others. As parents and educators, we can ask what good an expectation is intended to serve, and whether the way we communicate it helps that good become possible.
When a child struggles with prayer, patient teaching can help them learn its words and movements, make sense of its purpose, and experience the steadiness of adults who practise it themselves. Our manner becomes part of what they learn about religious life.
The verse also reaches into our own conduct after worship. Have I become easier to approach? Can I accept correction with greater humility? Is there someone who needs to experience generosity through me today?
Rūmī’s movement from sūd to jūd may return to us when the next prayer arrives in the middle of a crowded day. We can pause with the thought that, within this command, there is something being offered. Then we can pray, and carry the care we have received into the next person’s life.
Sources and textual notes
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Masnavī, Book II, verse 1756; related verse 1758. Persian text on Ganjoor; numbered text with Nicholson’s translation. The English rendering here is fresh; “worship” supplies the context of amr. The spelling بلک represents بلکه (balke), with the final ه omitted in writing: see Dehkhodā, “بلک”. The transliteration uses a literary Persian reading, with kunam and bandagān; ā, ī, and ū mark long vowels.
Rūmī, Masnavī, Book II, the preceding section, on Moses and the shepherd. Read the Persian narrative. The retelling follows Rūmī’s poem and is presented as a literary teaching story.
Qur’an 20:132. The excerpt is translated here for this post. It is offered as a Qur’anic companion to the couplet, without claiming a demonstrated direct quotation or allusion by Rūmī.
Qur’an 29:6, on the benefit of striving and God’s freedom from need.
Iqbal on mortality, the heart’s longing, and the courage to live
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
Bismi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm. In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful.
The poem begins with dust beneath our feet. By its final line, Iqbal has turned that dust into a challenge about how we should live. He moves through uncertainty, darkness, and the heart’s desire for something enduring. The questions remain sharp even as the poem summons us to courage.
This five-couplet ghazal appears in Muḥammad Iqbal’s Zabūr-i ʿAjam, Part II, poem 20. The Persian below follows the text on Ganjoor, with transliteration and a fresh English rendering.[1]
جهان ما همه خاک است و پی سپر گردد ندانم اینکه نفسهای رفته بر گردد
Jahān-e mā hama khāk ast u pay-sipar gardad; Nadānam īn keh nafas-hā-ye rafta bar gardad.
Our world is all dust, and will be trodden underfoot; I do not know whether breaths once gone return.
Khāk is earth or dust. Pay-sipar means trodden underfoot. The image gives mortality a physical weight: what once stood upright may become the ground over which others walk.[2]
Nadānam means “I do not know.” The speaker gives uncertainty a voice. The breaths that have departed suggest both the ending of a life and the moments already spent within it. I find that second possibility searching. Much of what we call our life is already beyond our power to recover.
شبی که گور غریبان نشیمن است او را مه و ستاره ندارد چسان سحر گردد
Shabī keh gūr-e gharībān nishīman ast ū rā; Mah u sitāra nadārad, chisān sahar gardad?
A night whose dwelling is the strangers’ grave has neither moon nor star—how can it turn to dawn?
The night itself has found a dwelling in the grave. Gharībān suggests strangers, exiles, or those who are far from home. The word brings loneliness into the darkness.
An ordinary night belongs to a world in which morning returns. Here, the familiar lights are absent, and the speaker asks how dawn can come. The question gives the fear of final separation room to speak. Anyone who has stood beside a grave may recognize the distance between knowing a teaching about death and finding words for a particular loss.
دلی که تاب و تب لایزال می طلبد کرا خبر که شود برق یا شرر گردد
A heart that seeks an ardour without end— who knows whether it becomes lightning or a spark?
Tāb u tab carries the sense of burning, fever, and ardour; lāyazāl means everlasting or unfading.[2] The heart longs for an intensity that will continue. The images offered in reply are lightning and a spark.
Both shine, and both can be brief. Their difference in scale leaves the question of duration unsettled. I hear a tension between the heart’s immense desire and its vulnerability: we can long for what lasts while remaining unable to secure our own next breath.
نگاه شوق و خیال بلند و ذوق وجود مترس ازین که همه خاک رهگذر گردد
Nigāh-e shawq u khayāl-e buland u zawq-e wujūd; Matars az īn keh hama khāk-e rahguzar gardad.
The gaze of longing, lofty imagination, the delight of being— do not fear that all become dust upon the road.
Iqbal gathers three expressions of inward life: the gaze animated by longing, imagination that reaches beyond the immediate, and delight in existence itself. Then comes matars: “do not fear.”
The command meets the possibility of loss directly. It asks us to keep these capacities alive while that possibility remains before us. We can continue to attend closely, imagine something better, and take joy in the life we have received. Fear of an ending can otherwise begin to narrow a life long before its end arrives.
چنان بزی که اگر مرگ ماست مرگ دوام خدا ز کردهٔ خود شرمسار تر گردد
Chunān bizī keh agar marg-e mā-st marg-e dawām; Khudā zi karda-ye khud sharmsārtar gardad.
Live so that, if our death is death for ever, God would be all the more ashamed of His own deed.
The final line is deliberately startling. Agar means “if”; permanent extinction is placed before us as a possibility. Sharmsārtar means “more ashamed.” The comparative sharpens the provocation and belongs in the translation.
I read this imagined divine shame as Iqbal’s audacious protest against the final erasure of a life rich in longing, imagination, and love. He asks us to live so fully that such erasure would become an unbearable loss. The language gives that protest a cosmic scale.
Yet the instruction is addressed to us: chunān bizī, “live in such a way.” After asking what may become of us, the poem asks what we will become through the way we live.
A verse from Sūrat al-Muʾminūn places human life and return to God within one question:
Did you think We created you in vain, and that you would not be returned to Us? — Qur’an 23:115[3]
The Qur’anic question affirms purpose and return. I place it beside Iqbal’s poem as a companion to its urgency, while allowing the poem’s unsettling questions to retain their force.
Qur’an 67:2 also joins death and life to the quality of our deeds.[3] Mortality brings a responsibility into view: how are we using the life entrusted to us? The question reaches into our conduct today.
This poem is useful when we reflect on the relationship between awareness of death and willingness to live with purpose. A meaningful life may be quiet. We can give substance to our time when we keep faith with someone through difficulty, make something beautiful with care, or repair an injustice.
As educators and parents, we can help children develop the capacities Iqbal names: attentive interest, imagination, and delight in being alive. We can give them opportunities to ask substantial questions, create, serve, and notice beauty. Our own example shows how these capacities acquire responsibility.
For personal reflection, I would begin close to home. What have I postponed because I assume there will be time? Which relationship needs my attention? What work asks for the courage I have been withholding?
The poem begins with breaths that have gone. Its final imperative belongs to the breath that remains to us. There is someone we can listen to, something worth making, some good we can begin. We can give this part of our life the care it deserves.
Sources and textual notes
Muḥammad Iqbal, Zabūr-i ʿAjam, Part II, poem 20; Ganjoor’s cumulative section 81. Persian text. A. J. Arberry’s Persian Psalms, Part II, poem 20, was consulted for comparison: Iqbal Academy edition. The English rendering and commentary here are fresh. The transliteration follows a literary, South Asian Persian reading; ā, ī, and ū mark long vowels. The final couplet’s conditional and comparative have been retained.
Dehkhodā, entries پی سپر, تاب و تب, and لایزال, for the principal lexical senses discussed.
Qur’an 23:115 and 67:2. These are offered as companions to the reflection, without claiming a demonstrated direct allusion in the poem. The English rendering of 23:115 is written for this post.
A Persian couplet on outward form and inward character commonly attributed to Rūmī
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
Bismi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīmi.
In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful.
A single consonant changes, and the couplet turns. Khilāf becomes ghilāf: what runs contrary to humanity becomes the covering of a human being. The sound brings the two words close together, while the meaning opens a troubling distance between the human form we recognize and the human qualities we hope to find within it.
This Persian couplet circulates under Rūmī’s name. A variant beginning ānche mī-bīnī appears in Maʿāriful Qurʾān in a discussion that invokes him. Its precise location in a critical edition of his works remains unverified here, so I retain the attribution with that qualification. [1] The text below preserves the wording under discussion, with pronunciation marks, transliteration, and a fresh English rendering.
Īn ke mī-bīnī khilāf-e ādam-and;Nīstand ādam, ghilāf-e ādam-and.
Those you see are contrary to humanity;they are not human, only human coverings.
Khilāf carries the sense of opposition or contrariness. Ghilāf is a covering, such as the cover of a book or the sheath of a sword. [2] The words have different roots; their closeness in sound gives the verse its force. Something may carry a recognizable exterior while failing to hold what we expect to find within it.
Ādam means a human being or person. Here I hear an ethical demand within the word. To act humanly is to recognize that other people have lives as real to them as mine is to me. Their pain makes a claim on my attention. Their dignity places limits on what I may do with my power.
The first line is therefore more severe than a complaint about emptiness. Khilāf suggests contradiction. A person may use human intelligence to deceive, or the capacity for speech to humiliate someone who cannot answer safely. The very faculties through which we can care for others can be turned against them.
The image of the covering also asks us to examine what we readily accept as evidence of character. A respected position can surround someone with signs of importance. Familiar religious language can give speech an appearance of depth. The couplet asks what life those forms actually contain, and how that life becomes visible in our dealings with others.
A person sought in daylight
A related concern appears in a securely located passage of Rūmī’s Masnavī. In Book V, a person walks through a marketplace in daylight carrying a candle. When asked what he is seeking, he answers that he is looking for a human being. The reply seems strange in a market full of people. He then makes his meaning more exact: he seeks someone whose humanity holds when anger and appetite press upon them. [3]
This is a separate passage, offered as a comparison. It gives the question of inward character a particular test. Anger can make another person seem like an obstacle. Desire can make them seem useful only for what they can give us. To remain attentive to their humanity in such moments requires discipline.
The test reaches into ordinary relationships. How do I speak when someone questions my decision? What happens to my fairness when I stand to gain? The person sought in daylight becomes recognizable through conduct when self-interest makes care difficult.
The later movement of Rūmī’s passage also turns towards the divine source of patience. [3] This keeps the search spiritually grounded. We can practise restraint, seek forgiveness when we fail, and remain grateful for the help through which we become capable of responding more wisely.
The heart and what it does
A teaching of the Prophet ﷺ recorded in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim gives a useful companion to the couplet: God’s regard concerns our hearts and deeds rather than our appearance and wealth. [4] Hearts and deeds belong together in this teaching. An inward claim acquires an ethical expression through what a person does.
This helps me read the covering as a question about the relationship between inward life and outward action. Compassion grows more credible when we make time for someone in distress. Humility becomes visible when we accept correction. A sincere intention can lead us back to the work of putting right something we have damaged.
The couplet’s severity also needs the company of a wider understanding of human dignity. Qur’an 17:70 speaks of the honour bestowed on the children of Adam. [5] I hold that affirmation beside the poem. A person’s harmful conduct can call for firm resistance and accountability while their human dignity continues to place obligations upon us.
For that reason, I find the verse most searching when I turn it towards myself. Where have I become satisfied with appearing considerate? When have I used words of goodness while making life harder for someone entrusted to my care? Such questions give its sharpness a purpose in my own growth.
Use in Akhlāq or Character
This couplet is useful when reflecting on the relationship between the values we name and the conduct through which others experience us. It invites us to look closely at an ordinary encounter and ask what our words and choices revealed about us.
In education, I would begin with the adult’s responsibility. A school gives its values an outward form through its language, routines, and shared expectations. Those forms need to carry a living regard for the child. A statement about respect acquires substance when a teacher listens carefully to a concern, especially when the concern is inconvenient.
A similar test comes when a child struggles to regulate an emotion. We can help the child understand the effect of a hurtful action, make amends, and practise a more considerate response. Our language can keep the child’s dignity intact while making the responsibility clear. Patient guidance gives them a way to grow into the humanity we ask them to express.
For leaders, the verse asks how authority is experienced by those with less power. Can someone disagree without being humiliated? Does an apology change what happens afterwards? The answers emerge through repeated encounters, often in moments that never enter a formal report.
The closeness of khilāf and ghilāf makes the couplet easy to remember. Its harder work begins when we examine the distance between the person we present and the person others meet. At the next difficult encounter, we have an opportunity to bring the two closer: to let the human form carry a more humane response.
Sources and textual notes
Muḥammad Shafīʿ, Maʿāriful Qurʾān, English translation, commentary on Qur’an 3:28–29, reproduced within the linked section covering 3:21–30. The couplet appears as ānche mī-bīnī khilāf-e ādam-and / nīstand ādam ghilāf-e ādam-and, after a reference to Rūmī. This is evidence of quotation and attribution in a later work; a critical-edition location establishing Rūmī’s authorship has not been verified. The wording used in this post begins īn ke mī-bīnī. Read source
Dehkhodā, entry khilāf, on opposition and contrariness; and Moʿīn, entry ghilāf, on a covering. The Persian has selective pronunciation marks. The transliteration follows the classical or Indo-Persian short i in khilāf and ghilāf; ā and ī mark long vowels. The English keeps the original’s categorical phrasing; its ethical interpretation is developed in the commentary. Read source | Moʿīn dictionary
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Masnavī, Book V, verses 2887–2894, on seeking a human being in daylight, and verses 2903–2904, on the divine gift of patience. Numbering follows the Nicholson text displayed in the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies database. The requested ghilāf couplet is not part of this cited passage; the passage is a thematic comparison. Read source
Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2564c, on God’s regard for hearts and deeds in contrast to appearance and wealth. This is a complementary teaching, rather than evidence of the couplet’s authorship or a direct allusion. Read source
Qur’an 17:70, on the honour bestowed on the children of Adam. The verse supplies the wider ethical context for the reflection on dignity. Read source
A poem attributed to Ibn al-Muʿtazz on taqwā and the care of everyday conduct
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
Bismi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīmi.
In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful.
The poem begins with a command to leave sins behind. It then places a person on thorny ground, watching where each step will fall. By the final verse, the scale has changed: mountains are made of pebbles. In three brief verses, the poet asks us to consider the weight of the choices we are tempted to dismiss.
These lines are attributed to the Abbasid poet Ibn al-Muʿtazz. The Arabic below follows the wording quoted by al-Qurṭubī in his commentary on Qur’an 2:2, with full vowel marks, transliteration, and a fresh English rendering. [1] I read their movement as an education in attentiveness: becoming more aware of what we do, what we allow ourselves to excuse, and how our conduct takes shape over time.
Leave sins behind, both smalland great: that is mindfulness of God.
Khalli means leave, relinquish, or give up. Its directness gives the opening a practical force. We are asked to release something we might otherwise continue to carry into our lives. Ṣaghīrahā and kabīrahā bring the small and the great within the same field of attention.
Tuqā is a form of taqwā, a word whose Arabic root carries the sense of guarding or protecting. In a life turned towards God, that care becomes a willingness to guard one’s conduct against wrongdoing. [1] The poem will make this inward disposition visible through the body of a person walking carefully.
The distinction between major and minor sins remains meaningful. Qur’an 4:31 distinguishes them and promises the forgiveness of lesser misdeeds to those who avoid the major sins forbidden to them. [2] The poet’s concern is the ease with which we can use smallness as permission. A slight distortion of the truth may appear convenient. If we repeatedly excuse it, we give dishonesty a familiar place in our speech.
The opening invites me to examine the explanations I make for myself. When I call something small, am I describing it honestly, or making it easier to continue?
Act like someone walking over thorny ground,taking care to avoid (the dangers) that he sees.
Ka-māshin means like someone walking. The image gives taqwā a movement and a pace. The walker looks closely enough to recognize what might wound him, and adjusts his steps accordingly. His awareness has a consequence in what he does next.
Yaḥdharu means he takes care or is wary. Mā yarā, what he sees, keeps the image close to the ground before him. I hear in this a call to become more responsive to the particular situation we actually face. Before I repeat a story, I can ask whether it is mine to tell. Before I answer in anger, I can notice what my words may do to the person receiving them.
Such care requires knowledge as well as intention. A person must learn to recognize a thorn. Our moral judgment also grows through listening, seeking guidance, and accepting correction when someone shows us an injury we had overlooked.
There is a useful resonance with Qur’an 59:18, which joins taqwā to considering what each soul has sent ahead for tomorrow. [3] The verse places our present conduct within a longer responsibility. The next step belongs to a journey whose consequences extend beyond what we can immediately see.
Lā taḥqiranna ṣaghīratan;Inna l-jibāla mina l-ḥaṣā.
Never regard a small sin as insignificant:mountains are made of pebbles.
Lā taḥqiranna is emphatic: do not belittle, do not treat as beneath consideration. Ṣaghīrah here means a minor sin. The closing image gives the warning its memorable form. Jibāl are mountains; ḥaṣā are pebbles or small stones. The poem brings their different scales together so that we can feel the significance of accumulation.
In a relationship, a repeated slight can acquire a history. The person receiving it remembers what the speaker has already forgotten. A dismissive remark that seems brief to the adult may become one more reason a child hesitates to speak. The mountain can become visible to another person long before we acknowledge the stones we have added.
The verse also makes me consider what familiarity does to judgment. Something that once troubled us can become ordinary when we repeatedly allow it. Attending to a small wrong gives us an opportunity to interrupt that movement while we can still name the particular thing that needs to change.
The words lā taḥqiranna, do not belittle, also open a teaching of the Prophet ﷺ recorded in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim. There they refer to good acts, including meeting another person with a cheerful face. [4] The verbal echo offers a hopeful companion to the poem’s warning. I read the two together as encouragement to take ordinary encounters seriously. A kind response has its own weight.
Care held within mercy
A poem about accumulated wrongdoing asks to be read alongside the possibility of repentance. Qur’an 39:53 addresses those who have transgressed against themselves and calls them to hope in God’s mercy; the following verse calls them to return to Him. [5] Moral attention can therefore carry the confidence that a different response remains possible.
When we recognize a wrong, we can stop, seek forgiveness, and attend to the harm done. Where another person has been hurt, an apology acquires substance through an effort to repair the injury and change the conduct that caused it. The poem’s warning can help us become more willing to begin that work.
Use in Akhlāq or Character
This poem is useful when reflecting on the ordinary choices through which character develops. Its image is simple enough to remember in the middle of a day. Before speaking, before forwarding a message, or before dismissing a concern, we can pause to notice where the next step will fall.
In education, I would begin with the adult’s example. When a child tells us that our words hurt, our willingness to listen gives moral care a visible form. When we acknowledge a mistake and put it right, the child sees responsibility being practised by someone who also asks it of them.
Children need patient help to understand intention, consequences, and the needs of other people. Their stage of development matters. We can help them name what happened, notice who was affected, and find a suitable way to make amends. Over time, such conversations give them language for the choices they will increasingly make for themselves.
For our own reflection, the questions remain close to daily life. Which small wrong have I become too ready to excuse? Whose experience would help me see its consequences? What can I put right today? We can also notice the small good within reach: giving someone our attention, keeping a promise, or making room for a quieter voice.
The poem leaves us with a mountain made of small stones. The image may return when an impatient reply is forming, or when we are deciding whether to keep a modest promise. At that moment, we can attend to the particular choice before us and take the next step with care.
Sources and textual notes
Al-Qurṭubī, Al-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-Qurʾān, commentary on Qur’an 2:2, discussion of taqwā. He attributes these three verses to Ibn al-Muʿtazz. The wording here follows his quotation. Other transmitted versions have minor differences. The English rendering and commentary are written for this post. Long vowels are marked ā, ī, ū; ʿ represents ʿayn. The transliteration retains grammatical endings; readers may pause naturally at line endings. In printed verse, arḍ, ground, is sometimes divided between the two half-lines; it is kept whole here for easier reading. Read source
Qur’an 4:31, on the distinction between major sins and lesser misdeeds, and the promise of forgiveness. Read source
Qur’an 59:18, on taqwā and considering what one has sent ahead for tomorrow. This is offered as a related passage, rather than a claim of an explicit quotation in the poem. Read source
Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2626, on giving weight to every good act, including greeting another person with a cheerful face. This supplies a complementary teaching about small acts of goodness. Read source
Qur’an 39:53–54, on hope in God’s mercy and returning to Him in repentance. Read source
Iqbal’s تخلیق — Takhlīq (Creation), from Zarb-e Kalīm
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
Bismi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm.
In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful.
Iqbal begins with the making of a world and ends with the possibility of companions. Between these two moments, he asks what a human being must become in order to bring something new into life. Fresh thought awakens possibility; resolve gives it strength; each breath becomes an opportunity to form a life that can endure. By the final couplet, the poet senses that others may arise to share this work.
Takhlīq, “Creation,” is an Urdu poem in the “Literature and Fine Arts” section of Zarb-e Kalīm. Its five couplets appear below in their original order, with transliteration, a fresh English rendering, and commentary. [1] I read its movement as spiritual renewal becoming creative responsibility: a person’s inward life acquires the depth and direction through which a new human world can emerge.
The beginning of a new world
جہانِ تازہ کی افکارِ تازہ سے ہے نمودکہ سنگ و خشت سے ہوتے نہیں جہاں پیدا
Jahān-e tāzah kī afkār-e tāzah se hai numūdKe sang-o khisht se hote nahīñ jahāñ paidā
A new world comes into being through fresh thought;for worlds are not born of stone and brick.
Afkār is the plural of fikr: thoughts or ideas. Numūd suggests appearing or becoming manifest. Iqbal places tāzah, “fresh,” beside both thought and world. Their renewal belongs together. The relationships, purposes, and ways of living that make a human world take shape through the thought that animates them.
The following couplets give this thought an inward source and a practical demand. An idea must acquire enough conviction to govern conduct. In the first lecture of The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Iqbal connects human initiative and the development of inward capacities with participation in the possibilities of the universe. He invokes Qur’an 13:11 to join changed human conditions to inward change. [2]
My mind goes to education. A school needs rooms, books, and places to work. It also needs a living understanding of the child, worthy purposes, and adults whose decisions give those purposes form. The opening couplet invites a question that reaches into daily practice: what kind of human world are our classrooms bringing into being?
A stream becomes a sea
خودی میں ڈوبنے والوں کے عزم و ہمت نےاس آبجو سے کیے بحرِ بے کراں پیدا
Khudī meñ ḍūbne vāloñ ke ʿazm-o himmat neIs ābjū se kiye baḥr-e be-karāñ paidā
The resolve and courage of those who plunge into selfhoodhave brought forth boundless seas from this stream.
Khudī names the developing personal self: the centre of consciousness, choice, love, responsibility, and action. Its growth involves the discipline through which a person becomes more fully capable of answering to God. In Asrār-e Khudī, Iqbal describes the self’s education through obedience, mastery of oneself, and divine vicegerency. Nearness to God gives individuality greater strength and fullness. [3]
“Plunging into selfhood” is therefore an image of discovering the depths and responsibilities of one’s own being. The scale changes: an ābjū, a stream, becomes a baḥr-e be-karāñ, a shoreless sea. A closely related poem in Bāl-e Jibrīl calls khudī itself a shoreless sea and reproaches those who mistake it for a stream. [4] That parallel helps us hear how much possibility an apparently small personal life may hold.
ʿAzm means firm resolve: a decision held steadily enough to shape action. Himmat means courage and aspiring energy. It also carries a spiritual resonance through Arabic himma, the aspiration that directs a seeker’s inward powers towards a high aim. Ibn ʿArabī’s letter to Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī associates elevated himma with seeking realized knowledge of God. [5] This illuminates a shared vocabulary; it does not make the couplet a statement of Ibn ʿArabī’s whole teaching. Iqbal’s pairing gives aspiration the steadiness of resolve.
The self’s growth also has an ethical measure. Iqbal writes: “The principle of the ego-sustaining deed is respect for the ego in myself as well as in others.” [6] In education, an adult’s growing judgment should help a child acquire judgment of their own. The strength of one person can become a condition for another person’s growth.
An everlasting life in every breath
وہی زمانے کی گردش پہ غالب آتا ہےجو ہر نفَس سے کرے عمرِ جاوداں پیدا
Vuhī zamāne kī gardish pe ghālib ātā haiJo har nafas se kare ʿumr-e jāvidāñ paidā
Only that person prevails over the turning of the agewho creates an everlasting life with every breath.
Here نفَس is nafas, “breath,” distinct from nafs, “self” or “soul.” Gardish evokes turning and changing circumstances. Iqbal brings the movement of an age into relation with the intimate passage of a single breath. A person’s inward purpose shapes how they meet what time brings.
ʿUmr-e jāvidāñ means everlasting life. The phrase reaches into Iqbal’s distinctive account of personal immortality. In the fourth lecture of The Reconstruction, he presents the self’s capacity to endure as something it must develop through its deeds. [6] Each passing moment therefore has a bearing on what the person is becoming and on the self’s future beyond death.
A Sufi reader may also hear a concern with presence: how do I inhabit this breath before God? The verse leaves that concern within its image, without prescribing a particular practice. I think of keeping a costly promise, restraining a humiliating word, or attending carefully to someone who needs us. Such moments form the one who acts and touch the life of the one who receives the act. The briefest encounter can carry a lasting responsibility.
The cost of losing selfhood
خودی کی موت سے مشرق کی سر زمینوں میںہوا نہ کوئی خدائی کا رازداں پیدا
Khudī kī maut se mashriq kī sarzamīnoñ meñHuā nah koʾī khudāʾī kā rāzdāñ paidā
With selfhood’s death in the lands of the East,no one intimate with the mysteries of God’s creation has arisen.
The word khudī returns under the sign of death. Read beside the stream becoming a sea, this death suggests a loss of inward vitality, judgment, courage, and creative responsibility. Iqbal addresses the lands of the East, so his grief concerns the life of societies as well as the condition of persons.
Rāzdāñ means one who knows a secret and, by extension, a confidant: someone admitted into intimacy. Khudāʾī can mean divinity or divine sovereignty; it can also mean God’s world, creation, and the manifestations of divine power. [7] The English here foregrounds creation, while the Urdu retains the resonance of intimacy with the Divine. I read the phrase as pointing towards someone awake to the mysteries of God’s creative order.
Such understanding asks something of the person who receives it. In the final lecture of The Reconstruction, Iqbal describes contact with ultimate reality as a transformation that finds historical expression through creative action. [2] Inward awakening acquires a task in the world.
The “death of selfhood” also needs to be distinguished from the varied Sufi meanings of fanāʾ, often translated as annihilation. Al-Hujwīrī gives several accounts; in one, ignorance gives way to knowledge, heedlessness to remembrance, and blameworthy qualities to worthy ones. [8] This helps us distinguish the spiritual overcoming of selfishness from the loss of responsibility and inward life lamented here.
The scent of companionship
ہوائے دشت سے بوئے رفاقت آتی ہےعجب نہیں ہے کہ ہوں میرے ہم عناں پیدا
Havā-e dasht se bū-e rafāqat ātī haiʿAjab nahīñ hai ke hoñ mere ham-ʿināñ paidā
From the desert wind comes the scent of companionship;it would be no wonder if companions arose to ride beside me.
After the severity of the fourth couplet, something reaches the poet from the open country. Dasht means wilderness or desert; here I hear an image of apparent barrenness and solitude. Bū, scent, announces a presence before that presence becomes visible. Iqbal senses the possibility of companions before he can point to their arrival.
Rafāqat means companionship, fellowship, friendship, or accompanying someone. It is related to rafīq, a companion. [7] Its spiritual significance grows from the quality and purpose of that companionship. Qur’an 4:69 places those who obey God and the Messenger in the company of prophets, truthful people, martyrs, and the righteous, and praises them as companions. [9] Companionship belongs here to the fulfilment of a God-directed life.
The Sufi background becomes clearer through ṣuḥbah, keeping company, familiar in Persian and Urdu as ṣuḥbat or suhbat. Al-Hujwīrī’s Kashf al-Maḥjūb treats companionship as a discipline undertaken for God’s sake. Its obligations include sincere counsel, concern for the companion’s welfare, and freedom from envy and dishonesty. [8] A companion’s example can strengthen our resolve; honest counsel can expose our self-deception; our responsibilities to one another train patience and fidelity.
There is also an ethical resonance in the shared Arabic root of rafīq and rifq, gentleness. The Prophetic teaching in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2593 commends gentleness and associates it with divine kindness. [10]Rafāqat still means companionship, but this related vocabulary invites attention to the care with which companions accompany one another.
I therefore hear spiritual fellowship in this line, while leaving the word’s breadth intact. The poem does not specify a formal spiritual station or a teacher–disciple relationship. Ham-ʿināñ gives the fellowship its more precise image. ʿInān means a rein; the compound evokes fellow riders and can mean a companion, peer, or equal. [7] Iqbal hopes for people able to share his direction and keep pace with his purpose. Their developed selfhood can sustain a common work.
A reader familiar with the story of Joseph may also hear a resonance with Jacob recognizing Joseph’s scent before their reunion, in Qur’an 12:94. [9] This remains a possible echo; the poem does not establish an explicit allusion. In either reading, the scent carries hope into a place that seemed empty.
Paidā, “born,” “arisen,” or “brought into being,” closes the second line of every couplet. Worlds arise, seas arise, everlasting life arises; a knower of mysteries fails to arise; then companions may arise. The poem’s hope for a new world becomes a hope for the people capable of creating it together.
Use in Akhlāq or Character
This poem is useful when we are preparing to build something: a school, a community, a piece of work, or a more purposeful life. It asks us to attend to the thought behind the undertaking and to the person we are becoming as we carry it. A worthy purpose needs inward discipline, courage, and a willingness to answer for our actions.
For a teacher, the questions become personal. What understanding of the child gives life to my choices? How am I strengthening my own judgment and helping children develop theirs? How do my words and decisions honour the dignity of those entrusted to me? Each ordinary encounter gives these questions a practical form.
The final couplet adds another responsibility: the care of companionship. Who helps me remain truthful about my work? Whose growth am I willing to support through patient attention and honest counsel? In the light of rafāqat, shared purpose carries obligations of kindness, fidelity, and responsibility before God.
Iqbal’s desert wind invites us to notice fellowship while it is still taking shape. Someone asks a serious question. Another person accepts a difficult responsibility. A colleague brings care and courage to work we share. These may be signs of the companions with whom a fresh thought can become a living world.
Sources and textual notes
[1] Muḥammad Iqbāl, Takhlīq, Zarb-e Kalīm, “Literature and Fine Arts.” The Urdu follows the text on Rekhta, with selective pronunciation marks. The English rendering is fresh for this post; the fourth couplet foregrounds the sense of divine creation within khudāʾī. Ñ marks a nasal vowel in the transliteration. The final line retains hai, present in the Urdu source.
[2] Muḥammad Iqbāl, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, lecture I, “Knowledge and Religious Experience,” and lecture VII, “Is Religion Possible?” These discussions connect inward development and religious experience with creative action.
[3] Muḥammad Iqbāl, The Secrets of the Self (Asrār-i Khudī), translated by Reynold A. Nicholson (1920), section IX and Iqbal’s explanation reproduced in the introduction. These supply the account of the self’s education and its development through nearness to God.
[4] Muḥammad Iqbāl, Bāl-e Jibrīl, the poem beginning “Khudī vuh baḥr hai jis kā koʾī kinārah nahīñ,” reproduced by Iqbal Academy Pakistan. Its sea-and-stream imagery supplies a close parallel.
[5] Ibn ʿArabī, “A Letter to Imam al-Razi,” translated by Mohammed Rustom, published by the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society. The letter’s use of himma illuminates the Sufi background of spiritual aspiration; it is offered as a comparison, not evidence of a direct borrowing in this couplet.
[6] Muḥammad Iqbāl, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, lecture IV, “The Human Ego—His Freedom and Immortality.” This is the source of the quotation on respect for oneself and others and of the discussion of personal immortality.
[8] ʿAlī b. ʿUthmān al-Hujwīrī, The Kashf al-Maḥjūb, translated by Reynold A. Nicholson (1911): “Discourse on Subsistence (baqā) and Annihilation (fanā),” especially pp. 242–243; and chapter XXIII, “Concerning Companionship, together with its Rules and Principles,” pp. 334–366. These provide classical Sufi context rather than proof of Iqbal’s specific sources.
[9] Qur’an 4:69, on the company of prophets, truthful people, martyrs, and the righteous; and 12:94, on Jacob recognizing Joseph’s scent. These are interpretive resonances; neither verse is explicitly quoted in the poem.
[10]Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2593, “The Virtue of Gentleness,” on rifq. Gentleness and companionship are related within the Arabic root family but remain distinct meanings.
A Persian couplet in praise of Mīr Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī, attributed to Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Bukhārī.
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
Bismi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm.
In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful.
The speaker comes with the condition of his heart, but pauses before describing it. Why explain what the person he addresses already knows? The answer lies in the sound of the second line, where hama-dānī leads into Hamadānī.
The heart’s condition
اَحْوَالِ دِل اَیْ شَاه نَگُویَم کِه نَدَانِی
Aḥvāl-e dil ay Shāh, na-gūyam ki na-dānī;
My King, why should I tell you what my heart holds, as if you did not know?
Aḥvāl is the plural of ḥāl: conditions or states. Here it gathers everything the speaker carries within his heart. His question has a quiet turn. By saying that he need not tell the King, he has already begun to speak.
A name within the answer
بِاللّٰه هَمَهدَانِی کِه تُو شَاهِ هَمَدَانِی
billāh, hama-dānī ki tu Shāh-e Hamadānī.
By God, you know all things, for you are the King of Hamadan.
Billāh means “by God.” The oath gives force to the speaker’s assurance. Then comes the couplet’s play on sound: hama-dānī, “you know all,” is heard again in Hamadānī, the saint’s name of origin. English can carry the meaning, but the Persian lets the name itself complete the praise.
“King” is an honorific address to the revered saint. I read “you know all” as the speaker’s expression of trust: he feels that the state of his heart is already understood.
A note on attribution
The version shared here attributes the couplet to Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Bukhārī. An Urdu discussion of poetry praising Hamadānī reproduces these lines among verses it associates with Muḥarram ʿAlī Chishtī. It does not establish who first composed the couplet, so the attribution remains tentative.
The first line holds back the story of the heart. The second speaks a name. Between them is the relief of being understood before every feeling has found its words.
Four Persian lines by Khwaja Habibullah Nowshehri of Kashmir, inspired by a couplet of Shah-i Hamadan.
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
Bismi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm.
In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful.
A traveller may walk for years and still struggle to find the way. A disciple may gather words about the spiritual life and still need someone who can help those words become understanding. The verses considered here place that need at the centre of the journey.
Khwaja Habibullah Nowshehri’s four-line poem develops a teaching expressed in a couplet of Shah-i Hamadan. Their connection is especially clear in the phrase بِه جَایِی نَرَسَد, bi jāyī narasad: “gets nowhere.” Shah-i Hamadan joins arrival to the master’s gaze. Nowshehri carries the thought through three figures: the traveller, the guide, and the beggar approaching a King.
Bi ʿAlī yak naẓarī kun zi sar-i ṣidq u ṣafā, Ki bi jāyī narasad bī-naẓar-i pīr murīd.
Cast a glance toward ʿAlī with sincerity and a pure heart; for no disciple reaches the goal without the master’s guiding gaze.
Naẓar means a look or gaze. In the company of pīr, the spiritual master, and murīd, the disciple, it suggests the attention through which a teacher recognizes and tends to a seeker’s condition. “Guiding gaze” brings that implication into English. A person can be looked at in passing; to receive sustained attention is to be known well enough to be helped.
The first line gives this looking an inward quality: ṣidq, sincerity or truthfulness, and ṣafā, purity and clarity of heart. The phrase zi sar-i means “out of” or “with a disposition of.” The glance is therefore joined to a truthful, clear-hearted intention. The couplet makes sincerity part of the relationship in which guidance becomes fruitful.
Nowshehri: the path, the guide, and the King
Nowshehri, also known by the pen name Hubbi, belongs to Kashmir’s Sufi poetic tradition. The importance of a spiritual teacher also appears in accounts of his other writings, including Tanbīh al-qulūb.[1] Here, that concern takes the compact form of two couplets.
Without a spiritual guide, a seeker gets nowhere on this path.
Mard is literally “a man”; the translation brings out his role as a seeker. Pīr literally means an elder and here names a guide with experience of the spiritual path. The line asks us to consider where our effort is taking us. Movement can become habitual, and confidence can grow before understanding does. An experienced guide helps the traveller recognize the road and his own condition upon it.
2. Finding someone who knows the way
نَرَسَدْ تَا بِه یَکْ رَاهنُمَایِی نَرَسَدْ
Narasad tā bi yak rāh-numāyī narasad.
He will not arrive until he finds a guide.
The repeated narasad, “does not reach,” makes one arrival depend upon another: reaching the goal begins with reaching a guide. Rāh-numā means one who shows the way. The word gives the teacher a practical task. Guidance helps the seeker recognize a mistaken turn, understand a difficulty, and learn how to proceed. The next step becomes possible through instruction, correction, and the willingness to receive them.
3. Hearing and witnessing
مَا شَنِیدِیم وُ بَدِیدِیم زِ هَرْ کَسْ هَرْ جَا
Mā shanīdīm u badīdīm zi har kas har jā.
This is what we have heard and witnessed, everywhere and from everyone:
The voice changes from the solitary traveller to “we.” Shanīdīm, “we heard,” stands beside badīdīm, “we saw.” A received teaching has become something the speaker believes he has recognized in life. “Everywhere and from everyone” expresses the breadth of his conviction. Its force is poetic: the lesson seems to meet him wherever he turns.
4. The beggar before the King
کِه بِلَاوَاسِطَه بَادْشَاهْ گَدَایِی نَرَسَدْ
Ki bilā-wāsiṭa bādshāh gadāyī narasad.
No beggar reaches the King without an intermediary.
Ki, “that,” connects this line to what the speaker has heard and witnessed. The scene changes from a road to a royal court. Gadāyī here means “a beggar,” while bādshāh names the King. The traveller now approaches in need, hoping for a generosity he cannot command. Wāsiṭa, the intermediary, is the one who helps him reach the royal presence.
In the poem’s spiritual imagery, the King can be read as God and the beggar as the seeker. The image gives the pīr’s help the form of an introduction: someone receives the traveller, understands his need, and helps him approach with humility.
How Nowshehri develops the earlier teaching
Read together, the poems give guidance both a personal and a practical form. Shah-i Hamadan’s naẓar-i pīr, “the master’s gaze,” emphasizes attentive relationship. Nowshehri’s rāh-numā, “one who shows the way,” emphasizes direction. To be seen and to be shown the way become related conditions of learning.
The verbal echo, bi jāyī narasad, makes the connection audible. Nowshehri then repeats narasad through the poem, returning the listener to the question of arrival. The rhyming words jāyī, rāh-numāyī, and gadāyī draw destination, guidance, and need into the same pattern. The teaching unfolds through images that a listener can picture: a road, a person who knows it, and a threshold beyond which generosity is hoped for.
Learning to receive guidance
The sincerity named in Shah-i Hamadan’s first line helps us read Nowshehri’s traveller. A willing heart can listen to correction, acknowledge confusion, and let understanding change its conduct. Guidance bears fruit in such acts: a more honest word, a steadier practice, a gentler response, or a responsibility finally accepted.
The royal image also needs to be held beside God’s nearness. The Qur’an says, “I am near,” and speaks of God answering the one who calls upon Him (2:186). Read in that light, the pīr’s work helps the seeker become attentive to a relationship with God already open to prayer. The teacher cultivates understanding, remembrance, and conduct; divine generosity remains God’s gift.
The beggar’s humility gives the journey its final shape. Even at the threshold, he comes with need. The guide has helped him approach; the seeker brings sincerity, receives instruction, and takes the next step.
Text and reading notes
The transliteration uses classical Persian vowel values: i and u often correspond to modern Iranian e and o. The letter w in wāsiṭa corresponds to modern Iranian v. Long vowels are marked ā, ī, and ū; the connecting vowel, or ezāfe, is written -i. The letters ṣ, ẓ, and ṭ preserve distinctions in the script, without requiring Arabic emphatic pronunciation in Persian.
